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Well after a terrible login lag issue for almost all last night I was able to get online and get most of the way to level 98, then this morning level up to 98. Root cause was not communicated, and there was a 4 hour lag between any updates on the issue from any Customer Service team. Not playing a game between 8pm – 10pm is extremely frustrating, and Blizzard needs to up the service and improve their communications to players. I was not trying to raid, but most Oceanic raids would have been totally wiped out last night. Eventually the @BlizzardANZ twitter account had the update and after a reboot the server returned to almost normal. I still found some parts of the UI slow, especially when in a Garrison.

I’m in the Spire now and enjoying that zone. The quests are more haphazard and I think there is more flexibility in what order quests are unlocked. I prefer this. My Death Knight was 93 on 25 Nov, and I’m 98 10 days later, so allowing for Christmas feasts and parties I’ll be 100 in about another week to 10 days.

Hopefully that is enough to then get to average ilevel 615 for the Molten Core revamped raid and get the special mount and helm. I have an heirloom weapon which will be 620-ish when I’m 100, and then it means grinding through Dungeons and hoping I get lucky with Follower quests.

I’m enjoying the game, Warlords so far is great. It will be interesting to see what the long tail game-play is like for a non-raider (aka LFR Raider).

I’m about 5% away from level 93 now, and still loving Shadowmoon Valley. As a zone it is well put together. The rares spawn often, they drop interesting and sometimes useful things, the monsters are squishy enough (especially if you overgear the zone), and the travel time between hubs and quest locations is enough to get you “into” the zone and exploring without being tedious. There are the odd special things found along the way, like the quest to kill animals for steaks, or the special events for the garrison.

It is also a little morbid to look at this zone and think about what we know of the alternative from our character’s own timeline. I can see parallels in the geography and that helps make the story’s impact stronger. I wish I was able to level faster, but not at the cost of missing the experience.

When leveling the first times through anywhere I’ll have the sound off, unless I’m totally solo’ing. When solo’ing I like the music.

As above for instances, when in them for the first few times I won’t use the sound so I can concentrate.

Solo’ing old instances I try to remember to turn the sound on.

If I’m not listening to the music, I’m listening to Podcasts, both WoW related and all the other odd podcasts I like.

If I’m on vent I’ll not have the sound on, but sometimes will have both my earbuds from my phone in so I can hear podcasts or different music, and also my gaming headset. It means there are a lot of cables around, but during a heavy wow session I don’t move much.

The music I’ve been listening to recently is some of Wagner’s Ring Cycle (an opera), and some 90s grunge music. Both styles are the music of my youth.

My Druid ding’ed 90 in WoW last week, which makes a tally of three level ninety characters: a Death Knight, a Warrior, and a Druid.

Next will be my slowly leveling Shaman who is now level 71 (the toon in the top left if the image below) and a long time lost Shadow Priest who is level 82 (bottom left character).

In my character list I also have a handful of 85s and then each class smattered down to a lowbie Monk at level 13. I do not really want to repeat the 85-90 grind so many more times, but the leveling path in Pandaria is so fixed there is little choice. Perhaps I could level by only queuing in Dungeons and just farm my way through the Pandaria starting area for materials to sell. That will only be moderately dull as well but will ensure my lowbies have the ability to increase their professions.

The Wrath of the Lich King content on the baby Shaman is sensational by comparison to 4x more Pandaria zones and a Cataclysm story.

If I cannot raid regularly in 5.4 due to work & life, then I might as well start working on these alts. Getting through the levels is something I can do whilst also being interrupted, and it is not “hard” content to do. Continue reading →

I’ve been happily playing through the Mists content with my Death Knight, and so far the questing has been excellent. I am now level 88 and getting close to the end of the second zone. By the level of the other players around me I get the impression that others are moving faster through the zones, and having rested XP might be a good cause for that – I am getting more xp per quest because I am generating more rested due to time not playing. Hey, not bad.

If given the choice I would be playing 16 hours a day and not in rested XP at all, but you can’t have everything. If I get to 90 without completing all the zones then I am sure I will get the opportunity over the next year or so to see them fully. Or I’ll complete them at max level and horde all the gold and drops.

The gear from questing is darn good – far better and specialised for the roles of a DK than any other expansion and this is by design. For some classes it might seem odd that they get given two dps options, but each of the plate melee classes/specs has slightly different needs for stats and this gives flexibility.

The Voice of the Deeps heroic two handed sword is ilevel 410 and still far better than any quest drop (at the moment). I guess that eventually I’ll see a weapon that is better, but so far the ilevel 415 greens and blues are not as good. VotD has a damage buff per mastery and the buff in mastery at for the gear above ilevel 400 is huge. I get the impression that it is not meant to be this good. I love it.

…and then last night…

I had the pleasure of playing for a prolonged period and was able to get through level 88 and I am now level 89. This was my stretch goal as I really wanted to get the dps and tanking trinkets from the Brewfest encounter before is ended.

After din’ing 89 I was fortunate enough to have a few guildies online who joined me in killing Direbrew a few times, and grabbed the dps trinket and one of the tanking trinkets.

I’m on a leveling mission: Get each of my toons to the highest level possible before the expansion.

I recently ding’ed 85 on my Warlock – Arkham, which is the second character I ever rolled in World of Warcraft. Now I move onto the remaining four: Priest, Mage, Rogue, and Shaman. For leveling I am using only dps style, and only infrequently doing the 5-man dungeons. As while I know the Dungeons are fantastic for gear and XP, I cannot commit to playing very long due to kiddlet interruptions. I don’t want to be that guy, who goes AFK for ages and needs to be kicked from the team.

As far as the Warlock goes the updates for the class in Mists of Pandaria look very appealing from a cosmetic perspective. It is tempting to fusk around and see if they still play as ruthlessly as they did in The Burning Crusade.

Next highest character is the Shadow Priest at level 81, which I created toward the end of TBC and has almost (a brief journey into Ulduar) always been an alt for Alchemy and Herbalism. Yeirah, you’re up. Get to the face-melting.

My wow’ing has increased recently, and as I’m playing more I find that my memory is flawed in some aspects of the game, and an optimal approach is somewhat harder than it used to be. I’m becoming a silly wow’er. As a positive I am enjoying wow a lot again, just in time for the expansion.

For example:

I remembered too late that Normal mode dungeons can be run many times each day, as they do not have a 24 lockout. This means that I could run the Stonecore normal many times a day for the rare mount, rather than once as I was. Doh.

As running normal for mounts is easy I was also doing Heroic UP in Northrend for the Blue Protodrake that drops there too. Imagine my joy in finding that I did not change the difficult after running Stonecore on Normal, when the mount only drops in Heroic mode. Doh, back to the entrance I go. It did seem a little easy.

The weeks activity was not all silly though, as I’ve started alt’ing around again. This time I am concurrently leveling a Mage (51), Warlock (83), Shaman (46), Rogue (50), and Priest (80). My suss is that I can cycle through these characters using the rested experience boost and then switch toons. So far with so many characters I am always playing in rested. Its great.

The reason that I chose these classes is because all my other class characters are already 85. I do get slightly disinterested with some content when you have to play it three times. Often though doing the same content with three perspectives give me an idea for the differences in the class. The squishy factor of a Priest and Warlock are concerning when compared with how tough and mean all the plate wearing classes are (yup, all my plate wearers are max’ed out, not a surprise really).

During the leveling I can sometimes (if the family don’t need help) queue up for a instance and smash monsters in a team. The times when I do this with guildies I get a very quick reminder that I’m a scrub when it comes to playing multiple classes. However when I play in randoms I find that I smash the charts and perform well. That might mean my guildies are very powerful (true), and also might mean that even a total scrub who stays out of the fire is valuable.

It’s a nice reminder of the golden rule: you do zero dps when you’re dead. Happy killing, alt’ing, and noobing.